Evidence for God from Science Newsletter January, 2001

Greetings in the name of the Lord! This is the latest edition of the update for
the Evidence for God from Science website. There are many new additions to the
site, including the first genetic analysis of ancient anatomically modern
humans.

This weekend was a scary time for our family, since Andy, our
middle son was hospitalized for over 24 hours. It began earlier in the week,
when Andy was taken to the pediatrician for some test to try to determine why he
was having recurrent fevers. A routine blood test turned up a high sedimentation
rate, indicative of some sort of inflammatory process going on. Andy had
complained of some pain in some of his bones, so a bone scan was ordered. The
pediatrician also noticed a heart murmur, so an echo cardiogram and EKG was
ordered. The bone scan was negative, but the cardiac tests were said to be
troubling. Our pediatrician was going to get a second opinion from a pediatric
cardiologist. Friday afternoon, I got a call from the office of a doctor I had
never heard of saying that they wanted to admit Andy to Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center as soon as possible, since the echo cardiogram showed that Andy had an
enlarged left ventricle. My wife, Carole, was taking photographs for a friend,
so Andy was at the babysitter. Since I work at Cedars-Sinai, I had to go home,
pick up Andy and then travel back to Cedars - a three hour round trip in Friday
night rush hour traffic. The time on the road gave me lots of time to pray and
think about Andy. As parents, I think we tend to take for granted our children
as we deal with the day to day struggles of parenting. In contemplating giving
Andy back to the Lord, I considered all the ways in which he is special and fits
in with our family. Andy is the "life of the party" and the glue that holds his
brothers together. Being the middle child, Andy plays and interacts easily with
both his older and younger brother. When the eldest and youngest brothers
interact, it is more like a teacher-student relationship. Our family would be
very different with Andy missing. Carole, notified the prayer team and Andy was
admitted to the ER at Cedars. After three blood draws, an X-ray, an EKG, and an
echo cardiogram, Andy was declared completely healthy and returned to school on
Monday. Although the experience was not pleasant, it made me take the time to
appreciate Andy. God uses such things to turn our focus to the important things
in life.

Congratulations to Adam, who submitted an essay about what God has done for him
and why he is grateful. In appreciation of his essay, Adam received a free
Evidence for God from Science CD-ROM along with Zondervan NIV Bible CD-ROM.

Evolution

The big news this month is the release of the first genetic study to examine
Genetic material found in mitochondria, the organelles that generate energy for the cell.mtDNA from ancient anatomically modern humans. Previous studies have shown that
there are large difference in The order of nucleotides in a DNA or RNA molecule, or the order of amino acids in a protein molecule.sequences of Genetic material found in mitochondria, the organelles that generate energy for the cell.mtDNA between modern humans and
Neanderthals. However, without a measure of the variation between ancient
anatomically modern humans and modern humans, the data is incomplete. The first
study to examine the Genetic material found in mitochondria, the organelles that generate energy for the cell.mtDNAThe order of nucleotides in a DNA or RNA molecule, or the order of amino acids in a protein molecule.sequence of ancient anatomically modern humans was
published in 2001, examining the Genetic material found in mitochondria, the organelles that generate energy for the cell.mtDNAThe order of nucleotides in a DNA or RNA molecule, or the order of amino acids in a protein molecule.sequences of 10 ancient Australians. The
results show that even 62,000 year old humans had virtually the same Genetic material found in mitochondria, the organelles that generate energy for the cell.mtDNA as
modern Aboriginal humans. In contrast, contemporary (or later) Neanderthals are
markedly different from ancient or recent anatomically modern humans.

Apologetics

What does the Bible say about Reincarnation?
This is a page that examines what the Old and New Testament says about
reincarnation. The New Testament is very clear about the issue, but the Old
Testament is not as clear. Most Jews believe that you can come back in a second
mortal life to help atone for your sins. In fact, recently, an influential
Orthodox Rabbi from Israel stated that all of the 6 million Jews who died in the
Holocaust were reincarnated sinners. However, there are a number of Old
Testament verses that indicate that we have only one mortal life.

The Trinity in the Old Testament
Orthodox Jews and many cults do not like the idea of the Trinity, complaining
that the concept is not found in the Bible. Pages already exist on this site
that demonstrate the concept of the Trinity from the New Testament. However,
Jews do not accept the New Testament as scripture. The new page demonstrates how
the Trinity is found in the Old Testament so that you can be better prepared to
share the gospel with your Jewish friends and co-workers.

"Creationary Model for the Universe and Life on Earth" is a comprehensive model
for the universe that fits both biblical accounts and scientific data. It is a
much-requested (by evolutionists) creationary model. One of the most common
complaints from evolutionists is that we criticize evolution without providing a
reasonable alternative. This page is an attempt to answer their charge.

The Bible is comprised of a series of writings over a period of thousands of
years. This new page outlines the origin of the Old and New Testaments,
including the evidence we have for the integrity of those writings.

Young Earth Creationism

The Genesis Flood- Why the Bible Says It Must be Local

Many people have written to know what my position is on the flood. Was it global
or local? After much time in research, I have concluded from the Bible that the
Genesis flood must have been a local event. There is one key verse in Psalms 104
(the "creation" psalm) that indicates quite clearly that the flood was local.
The Psalm describes the creation of the Earth (beginning with a description of
an expanding universe), followed by description of the early earth as a water
covered planet, and the formation of land masses. The key verse is verse 9:

"You set a boundary they [the waters] cannot cross; never again will they cover
the earth." (Psalms 104:9)

Obviously, if the waters of the earth never again covered the entire earth, the
flood must have been local. There is much other evidence presented, including
verses from the New Testament and the Genesis flood text itself, which clearly
establishes the frame of reference as being local. The page also establishes
that our English "translations" of the flood text are more than translations,
but are actually interpretations of the text, which internally contradict
themselves as translated. The reader is challenged to reread the Genesis flood
passages and substitute the most common translations of key Hebrew words for the
ones used in our translations. You will never view the Genesis flood quite the
same:

For the past several decades, the question of the age of the Earth has been a
very divisive one among Christians. Many people (known as "Young-Earth
Creationists") believe that the only valid interpretation of the Bible indicates
that the Earth is 10,000 years old or less, and they also claim to have
scientific evidence that supports this view of the Earth. Mr. Tiscareno has
investigated these young-Earth "scientific evidences" to determine what the
truth is, "confident that God will be glorified by the Truth regardless of its
theological implications."Is There Really Scientific Evidence for a Young Earth? by Matthew S.
Tiscareno
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~matthewt/yeclaimsbeta.html

Doctrine

I know that all of you Christians have felt left out by not being able to
participate in the Atheism Test.
So I have created a JavaScript Basic Theology Quiz for you to test your
understanding of basic Christian theology. There are 25 multiple choice
questions that should take you less than 10 minutes to complete. Consider
yourself challenged - take the test!

Do you have Netscape 6? If you do, be sure to add GodAndScience.org to your
sidebar. The sidebar lists all the new pages added to the site, so that you can
keep up with the latest information. Just click the "Add Tab to Netscape 6" icon
on the home page. Don't have Netscape 6? You can find a list of recently added
pages

Projects
being worked on:

"All ways lead to God" - An examination of this popular belief is shown to be
logically impossible.

The Power of Atheism to Change Lives - Yes, the title is a teaser. Even atheists
can recognize that atheism has no power to change our behaviors. The page will
examine the differences between atheism and Christianity in terms of their
effects upon moral behavior. It will also include a list of links to testimonies
of people whose lives have been changed by the power of Jesus Christ. This page
should appear within a week of the current newsletter. If your testimony is on
the web, let me know so that I can link to it. Thanks!

The Incredible Genetics of "". A popular young earth ministry of has some rather
remarkable science and theology regarding the ability of organism to evolve
through genetic recombination. In essence, they believe that all the "kinds" of
organisms of Genesis were born with multiple alleles of Functional and physical units of heredity passed from parent to offspring. Genes are pieces of DNA, and most genes contain the information for making a specific protein.genes that were highly
diverse. For some reason, these Functional and physical units of heredity passed from parent to offspring. Genes are pieces of DNA, and most genes contain the information for making a specific protein.genes never segregated during the first couple
thousand years of the history of life on earth. However, after the flood, these
same Functional and physical units of heredity passed from parent to offspring. Genes are pieces of DNA, and most genes contain the information for making a specific protein.genes suddenly formed all the species we see on the earth, along with those
found only in the fossil record. I don't usually name specific Christian
ministries, but try to keep my comments generic in nature. However, this young
earth ministry has recently gone out of their way to attack the ministry of
Reasons To Believe by name. I am praying about whether to name names, or leave
the name of the ministry off the page. Please give me your feedback about how
you think the Lord would handle this issue. Thanks for your prayers.

Those
are the most recent updates and changes since the last e-mail update. If you
would like to see anything in particular at Evidence for God from Science, let
me know. Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, The people whom He has
chosen for His own inheritance.

In Christ,Rich Deem

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